Apocalypse Now

The end of days are upon us, or so we hear. This is the way the world ends: with Double Exposure munching popcorn and watching some of our favorite cinematic apocalypses.

4:44 Last Day on Earth

Abel Ferrara’s latest plays like excerpts from its maker’s diary—revealing, sincere, tone-deaf, often incredibly uncomfortable, occasionally revelatory. It’s an unsatisfying film that asks a very good question: If the world were to end tomorrow, what would I do? –Max Nelson

Melancholia

Melancholia begins with a set of images, set to Wagner’s haunting “Tristan und Isold”, that serves as a sort of prelude to the film, showing a dejected Kirsten Dunst, a panicked Charlotte Gainsbourg, and a beautifully rendered celestial collision. In these opening moments and throughout the film, Von Trier is able to depict total obliteration on vastly different scales: one within a depressive’s psyche, one within a family’s intimate drama, and another concerning the entire planet’s demise. –Julia Selinger

Pulse

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s2001 horror film unfolds in world not unlike our own, in which computers are slowly turning young people into ghosts. The apocalyptic vision of Pulse eschews bombast and destruction in favor of the terror and emptiness of solitude. This world ends not with a bang, but a prolonged, spectral whimper of loneliness. –Will Noah

The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan tackles the end-of-the-world genre with a minimalistic tale of couple’s dysfunction in the midsts of mankind’s extinction. It’s honest and raw, answering the question of what matters to us and what we’d say to each other if we only had 5 minutes to live. It evokes Hitchcock (The Birds) and Wolf Rilla (Village of the Damned) but really it’s pure Shyamalan. –Theo Zenou

Nowhere

The end of the world involves valley girls, deranged baywatch celebrities, and giant lizards from space in the dementedly funny final installment of Gregg Arakis “teenage apocalypse trilogy,” which he describes as “an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 on acid.” –Gus Reed